


kenopsia

by madasaboxofcats



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, post 4.11, sometimes i write things instead of studying for the bar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 13:20:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4181316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madasaboxofcats/pseuds/madasaboxofcats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kenopsia: The eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet.</p><p> </p><p>"She hears the words people don’t say."</p>
            </blockquote>





	kenopsia

When she was six, she had two boy hamsters named Ram and Rom who one day had babies and weren’t two boy hamsters after all.

She felt excited and kind of betrayed because the world wasn’t as she saw it and she didn’t know why.

Her mother knelt down to look her in the eyes, Ram squirming in her hand. She smiled a little, the soft, kind smile that burns in her brain sometimes when she can’t quite remember where she came from or who she was or how she got where she ended up. 

“Things aren’t always what they seem, Samantha. Sometimes you have to look and listen for what’s not there.”

Root wouldn’t know what that meant until later. 

She starts listening.

\--- 

She hears the words people don’t say. 

The “I’m sorry” that covers up _“You deserved it,”_ the _“if”_ and _“unless”_ that underscore every “I love you” that has ever been spoken to her. She hears when people say “yes” instead of “no,” when they say things they don’t mean because society has told them that directness, honesty is undesirable if it damages feelings or pride or societal expectations.

People don’t say what they mean, but she knows anyway because she listens. 

She makes a career out of it for a while, hunting people down, punishing them for secrets and unspoken words, collecting a paycheck. It doesn’t take her very long to figure out that the more she focuses on the talking and the lies and the click-clack of the trigger pull, the less she had to feel.

The world is noisy and she bathes in the clamor.

\---

(Sometimes the noise threatens to overwhelm her, the constant chatter, the pounding of feet on pavement, of hearts beating and phones ringing and taxis blaring their horns in rush hour traffic.

The world is loud and always moving.

She wonders if it will ever slow down. She hopes it won’t. It’s so much more fun when it’s swirling.)

\---

The first time she hears God, all of the other noise melts away and it’s just the two of them (and the guns and the people chasing them, but they don’t matter, none of it matters). She hears God and becomes Her prophet, full of faith and firearms and never looking back.

This is what she was meant for. This is who she was meant to listen to, someone who observes and interprets hears everything she can’t, all of the sound that is filtered out into the thrum of life.

The Machine’s speech is made of a thousand different voices, broken pieces coming together, and it makes her feel whole.

\---

(They are so many broken pieces, too, their ragtag bunch of dead assassins and computer nerds, disposable people who no one misses or remembers. They don’t quite fit together because each piece is broken in its own way, sharp edges and straight lines and jagged curves, but they try and it is enough. 

Sometimes she thinks they come together not like a puzzle but like pane of stained glass, each piece connecting to the others to make something beautiful.)

\---

When She stopped talking, She left behind a static, like the white noise that came at the end of a movie when she’d fallen asleep and left the VCR rolling. The soft buzz hums, thrumming and throbbing and pulsing through her like blood, reminding her that she is not alone, that she will never be alone because She is there, watching and protecting.

The noise undercuts everything.

\---

She hears the words people don’t say.

She hears the “four alarm fire in an oil refinery” that means _“maybe someday.”_

(And that’s enough for her, that’ll always be enough because there’s no body left on the floor when they return – she’s not dead, she can’t be dead, it wasn’t supposed to be her – and _maybe someday_ still exists in the realm of possibility.) 

She hears _“goodbye”_ in a kiss.

There is a moment when she is screaming and bullets are flying and Shaw (Sameen, the one person who really heard _her_ ) is falling to the floor that the sound drops out, and there’s nothing left.

Her body sinks to the floor.

Her mind is silent and all she can do is _feel_.

\---


End file.
